Though the Cicero-North Syracuse baseball team was on the road and their Liverpool counterparts were on the road, each of them would emerge with important victories early in the final week of the regular season.
For the Northstars, it involved a late-game comeback against West Genesee that turned a potentially damaging defeat into a 5-4, eight-inning win that likely locked up the top seed for the Section III Class AA playoffs.
As that went on, Liverpool, playing at Baldwinsville, squandered an early four-run lead, but produced at the plate when it had to down the stretch to beat the Bees 8-4.
Once at 13-1, with the lone blemish a 10-2 defeat to C-NS on April 27, West Genesee had suddenly slumped with back-to-back defeats to Syracuse and B’ville on May 12-13, and was desperate to find the top form it had shown for most of the spring.
C-NS, who was 14-2 going into the game, decided not to pitch ace Steven Theetge for a second time against the Wildcats. Instead, Sam Spadafore got the nod, and for three innings he and WG counterpart Evan Reichel kept it 0-0.
Then the Wildcats broke through against Spadafore with three runs in the top of the fourth. C-NS countered with its own fourth-inning tally, but WG added a run in the fifth, making it 4-1 as Reichel, Marshall Winn and Anthony Carrodeagus earned RBIs for the visitors.
Reichel maintained that lead until the bottom of the sixth, when two C-NS runs cut the margin to one, 4-3, and forced the Wildcats to use its bullpen. Try as he could, though, Vince Mills could not keep the Northstars from netting the tying run in the seventh.
They went to extra innings 4-4, and Brad Hamilton, with his 2 1/3 innings of scoreless, one-hit relief, kept it that way, setting up the bottom of the eighth, when Stephen Kires, who beat Syracuse 1-0 with a game-winning hit earlier this season, singled to left off reliever John Schad and brought home the decisive run.
It was Kires’ second hit of the game, matching him with Theetge and Jake McArdell in the middle of the order. Mike Copani and Connor Stanton joined McArdell and Theetge in the RBI column.
While all this was going on, Liverpool was jumping on B’ville pitching ace Cody Kaestle for four first-inning runs, eager to complete a regular-season sweep over a Bees side it beat 6-3 on April 27 in the Strike Out Lou Gehrig’s Disease Classic at NBT Bank Stadium.
As Kaestle settled down, the Bees fought back, pecking away at Warriors pitcher Tom Bianchi for single runs in the second, third and fourth innings. Another run in the bottom of the fifth tied it, 4-4, and the Warriors needed something to happen.
And something did happen in the top of the sixth. With Kaestle out, Liverpool eagerly jumped on B’ville reliever Frank Mayosky and scored twice in that inning, and added a pair of insurance runs in the top of the seventh.
Liverpool’s bullpen, anchored by Bobby Zywicki, held on to the lead built up through the work of Anthony Sgroi, who had three RBIs, and Dillan Wilkinson, who had three of the Warriors’ 12 hits and got a pair of RBIs. Rocco Leone added two hits.
